Venezuela

...China has been cooperating with Latin America in the field of space research for many years. Chinese state-owned company China Great Wall Industry Corporation and the Venezuelan government have signed an agreement to build and deliver into orbit Venezuela's third satellite. It’ll be used for intelligence gathering... China plans to build an antenna for deep space observation in Argentina's southern Patagonia region in Neuquen province. It also takes part in the Latin American effort to boost its defense capability. Chinese experts help Venezuela to produce drones for monitoring the Amazonian region...

The US special services together with their “assistants” from Canada and Great Britain tried again to stage a coup in Venezuela. In the middle of February, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said the national security services frustrated the plans of US embassy and put an end to its hostile actions. As a result, a number of people were arrested, including Venezuelan air force officers and activists of radical opposition. The subversive activities were guided by Western diplomatic missions. The names of those behind the plot are known but they cannot be brought to justice being protected by diplomatic immunity...

There are straightforward principles and dynamics at work here. Washington wants to get rid of the Venezuelan government because it is independent of US designs for the region and because Venezuela has the greatest proven oil reserves in the world and uses its oil revenue to improve the quality of ordinary lives. Venezuela remains a source of inspiration for social reform in a continent ravaged by an historically rapacious US. An Oxfam report once famously described the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua as ‘the threat of a good example’.

It is important to pay attention to the events in Latin America. Not only are the events there indicative of regional changes, but they are also indicative to events in Eurasia. The US decline in the Middle East and Washington’s increasing tensions with the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China are playing out in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America...

The observations made by the Venezuelan journalist José Vicente Rangel are generally regarded as well informed and accurate. For the television program Los Confidenciales («Reliable Sources») he recently reported on the work of the supplemental staff at CIA stations in Latin America. According to Rangel, at least 500 reinforcements have arrived at the US Embassy and other US headquarters in South America in order to help the other operatives escalate their subversive and espionage activities. Those agents are focusing on countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, and Cuba... The operational positions of US intelligence services in Latin America have branched out and are now capable of carrying out destabilizing operations...

The US is engaged in rather dubious activities as it attempts to damage the Russia’s economy by making fall down the world oil prices... Concentrated on hurting Russia Americans fail to see what’s happening in their own backyard... There is ground to believe that while openly supporting the United States Saudi Arabia plays its own game aimed at squeezing the competitors away, including America, from the market. Some time ago Riyadh used to say that OPEC members will not cut production even if the price plunges to $40 dollars a barrel. With oil prices plummeting traditional oil producers have enough reserves to make it through a period of frugality while the US shale industry will be delivered a deadly blow to make it never bounce back. The negative economic trends are already visible in the US while Russia has not even started to take counter measures as the economic war unleashed against it is raging on...

Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan's long familiarity with Saudi Arabia, owing to the time he spent there as the CIA station chief in Riyadh in the 1990s and his knowledge of Saudi oil operations, has paid off. Petroleum industry insiders claim that Brennan's agents inside Saudi Aramco convinced the firm's management and the Saudi Oil Ministry to begin fracking operations in order to stimulate production in Saudi Arabia's oldest oil fields. The Saudis, who are not known for their hands-on knowledge of their nation’s own oil industry, agreed to what became an oil pricing catastrophe which would not only affect Saudi Arabia but oil producing nations around the world from Russia and Venezuela to Nigeria and Indonesia...

As US President Barack Obama announced his surprise «historic» bid to normalise relations with Cuba this week, the New York Times swooned with glowing news. ‘US to Restore Full Relations With Cuba, Erasing a Last Trace of Cold War Hostility’ was how its top headline put it. Welcoming the development, the American «newspaper of record» said Obama vowed to «cut loose the shackles of the past» and to «sweep aside one of the last vestiges of the Cold War». But, purple prose aside, the hard detail is that the ongoing illegal American embargo on Cuba will stay in place. Moreover, the move comes as Washington slaps on more sanctions against Russia and unleashes new sanctions on Venezuela...

...Many in Latin America believe that after Hugo Chavez, Rafael Correa became America’s main target. Correa’s decision to close the US air base at Manta was taken particularly badly by Washington. The agreement on its use expired in 2009, and Correa announced that the contract would not be extended. Washington was asked to open an Ecuadorian base in the US on a reciprocal basis. «That’s not how we do things», replied the US State Department. Ecuador’s response came immediately: «In which case, there will not be a US military base in Ecuador either»... Rafael Correa has no intention of changing his country’s foreign policy, which is geared towards Latin American integration, the development of a multipolar world, and the maintenance of close relations with countries like China and Russia. For these reasons, John Kerry’s visit to Ecuador, which has been rumoured in the media all year, will not take place.

...The post-war history of Gdansk, liberated on March 30, shows that some people have a really poor memory. Gdansk, or the free city of Danzig, had never been part of Polish state till the Versailles Treaty of 1919 that gave Poland access to the Baltic Sea. Germans had accounted for the larger part of population... The USSR did much more than just liberate Polish cities. Thanks to the position of the Soviet Union taken at the Potsdam conference the Poland’s territory was increased by at least a third in comparison with what it had been before the war. Danzig was incorporated into Poland. That’s what Poles appear to forget nowadays. They feel no gratitude towards Russia. And they seem not to remember how cruelly they treated the Germans residing in Danzig...